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Oct 29, 2013

Confusion Fu, a.k.a. Unusual Attack Maneuvers

Babbling at the Counter #14 -
Pen and Paper

Confusion Fu, a.k.a. Unusual
Attack Maneuvers

Unusual attacks can be a pain
in the ass for a GM. If a punch and a sword swing do different amounts of
damage (can you believe that?) then dropping a shelve over an enemy should do
its own damage too.

I'll give the specific
example that brought this to my attention: a friend and I were working on our
own system, so I run a "test drive" for him. At first everything went
fine. It was when he was chopping some hay golems when he got an idea. Instead
of attacking them individually, he wanted to squash them pushing a ruined column.
The system was simple enough to allow a Strength check as an attack, but the
damage was problematic. As they were flunkies, I ruled instant death, but it
opened the door to a full adventure of unusual attacks.

Dropping statues from some
flights of stairs, setting straw golems on fire and dropping a giant bell on
the final boss were only some of the multiple maneuvers he did. It was like he
didn't even wanted to use his damned sword! On the end, I had to drop the whole
"damage" aspect of the game and measure the enemies on
"moves". “Weaklings” required a single move to kill and could be
destroyed in numbers. “Though ones” required one or two moves, but could be
attacked one at a time. The Boss was slowly eroded, taking some "status
effects" as results of attacks (he immobilized him first, and then stopped
it from attacking him physically, though it could still use its magic) and,
finally, dying.

The whole HP concept and the
Str equation for damage turned out to be useless... but we did manage. So, how
do you deal with unusual combat maneuvers? Is there a good system to check out
for ideas? I liked mine, but I fell it won't work on more complex systems. Could try, though.